Carville “Worried”: “Nobody’s Gotten Elected With These Numbers”

Democratic strategist James Carville tells radio talk show host Scott Hennen that he is nervous about 2012. Carville says Herman Cain has no chance to be President, called Perry embarrassing and predicted that Romney will get the GOP nod.

“If I were, and I’m not, but if I were a proud principal conservative, I would be humiliated by this field. I really would,” Carville said on the “Scott Hennen Show.” Relevant portion transcribed below:

HENNEN: But that should worry you in a general election, shouldn’t it?

CARVILLE: Let me repeat. Everything worries me in this environment. Nobody’s gotten elected with these kinds of numbers. So, I’m worried in the general election. I profoundly admit that. Again, Romney’s just making a technocratic kind of confidence argument, and he’s really kind of a windsock of a guy. If you don’t like his position on something, give it a day he’ll change it.

House Speaker John Boehner rebuked Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid Wednesday after he inserted a millionaire surtax to help pay for President Obama’s $447 billion jobs bill, describing the change as a “desperate tax hike” gimmick.

The Democratic leader, who a day earlier turned away a crafty Republican bid to call a vote on the bill, dropped the surtax into the legislation in an effort to shore up support from Democrats who had voiced concerns with other tax provisions in the bill. Reid instead proposed a 5 percent income tax increase for people making more than $1 million a year.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said the surtax is not the way to go.

“Republicans have identified areas of common ground where we can work with the President and Democrats to create a better environment for job creation,” Steel said in a statement. “That should be our focus, not desperate tax hike gimmicks floated to cover up divisions within the Democratic caucus.”

But Reid defended the move, saying: “Even the Tea Party thinks it’s time for millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share.”

Dingy should go play with the useful idiots in the Wall Street protests. They match his metal ability.

The Supreme Court let stand a 9th Circuit ruling that affirmed World Vision, a Christian aid organization’s, right to fire employees who don‘t share the humanitarian group’s religious beliefs. This, much like the Hosanna-Tabor case, involves the “ministerial exception,” which is a legal doctrine that provides protection to churches and religious institutions, alike, from government intervention in employment decisions.

In describing how faith plays into the organization’s hiring process, World Vision’s U.S. president, Richard Stearns, said in a statement on Monday that it is “…vital to the integrity of our mission to serve the poor as followers of Jesus Christ.”

In this particular case, the former employees who were suing the organization had initially signed a statement of faith (a document that reaffirms that they believe in Jesus Christ and the elements embraced by the organization). But when they could no longer claim that they adhered to these values, they were terminated.

The argument here, as in the Hosanna-Tabor case is that the organization, which involves itself in economic development and disaster relief activities, isn’t entirely a religious organization. Thus, in the eyes of the terminated employees and their legal team, the organization wouldn’t be exempt from Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which forbids religious discrimination). By not hearing the case, though, the Supreme Court offered up a victory to World Vision.

So why does Obama not like the ‘discriminatory religious doctrine’ that church faith organizations can hire and fire based on the employees religion?

To the dismay of consumer groups and the discomfort of Democrats, President Barack Obama wants Congress to make it easier for private debt collectors to call the cellphones of consumers delinquent on student loans and other billions owed the federal government.

The change “is expected to provide substantial increases in collections, particularly as an increasing share of households no longer have landlines and rely instead on cellphones,” the administration wrote recently. The little-noticed recommendation would apply only to cases in which money is owed the government, and is tucked into the mammoth $3 trillion deficit-reduction plan the president submitted to Congress.

Despite the claim, the administration has not yet developed an estimate of how much the government would collect, and critics reject the logic behind the recommendation.

The paper writes that Obama campaign manager Jim Messina has told Democratic officials that the president will raise about $55 million in the quarter that ends Sept. 30, about $30 million less than he raised the first quarter of his campaign – which was the second quarter of the year, ending June 30.

The news was – gosh who would have expected – buried within the Times story.